First Week in Rouen and French class -- by Lola

Wandering around jet lagged our first few days, we still managed to find freshly baked baguettes and croissants, French wine, and cheese. Madame Lejamble and I had a pleasent 2 hour conversation--with the aid of a French-English dictionary. I ended up saying "death" (mort) instead of "word" (mot), but other than that, things went pretty well.

Because of the Easter holiday, our first day of class at the French in Normandy school was Tuesday. All of the instruction is in French. To give you an idea of my level starting out, well, I've been studying French for about 6 months with Emily Carmichael. She's an excellent teacher, but I was thrilled when I could understand a French toddler in the grocery store pointing out items on the shelves. In other words, I have a fairly basic understanding.

Now this particular Tuesday, the letter "y" didn't exist for me. I couldn't remember how to say it when reciting the alphabet in French, and it fell out of any French words I had to write. On the board in front of class. It was that kind of day.

The teacher made a "tut tut tut" sound that was the verbal equivalent of a Catholic nuns' ruler. However, she quickly realized Dave and I were actually capable of conjugating être and avoir (the next hurdle in her class), and so moved us to a more advanced class. One that, thankfull_, did not include the letter "y".

And so, we began the week by conjugating French verbs in passé compose. My mind melted, but I still had fun. My classmates-two sweet Japanese ladies (Rei and Eri), a wise-cracking Argentinan man (Emiliano), and a calmly competent Indonesian man (George)- all helped to make things easier. To help each other understand words and concepts, we used a combination of pantomime, drawing, bits of French, English, Spanish, or whatever language we could find in common. When we listened to French singers on Friday, the teacher asked us what the album name "Dig Up Elvis" (Julien Doré) meant. Pretending to dig up a zombie Elvis, everyone was quite amused-and horrified-at the same time.